Apple loses another iPhone prototype at a bar

Despite the high-profile incident last year with an Apple employee losing an iPhone 4 prototype at a bar, it seems the same blunder has happened again for the iPhone 5. But this time, the lost prototype, gone missing since late July, managed to stay under the radar until CNET reported learning of it today.

The iPhone 5 prototype went missing in San Francisco’s Mission district in late July when an Apple employee left the device at a “tequila lounge” called Cava 22. The device was reportedly taken from the bar and sold on Craigslist for $200. Apple security tried to recover the device and electronically traced the phone to a two-story single-family home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood.

Apple’s investigators along with the San Francisco police paid the address a visit and found a man in his twenties who admitted to being at Cava 22 on the night the phone went missing but insisted that he knew nothing of the device. Apple employees offered money for the phone with no questions asked, but the man continued denying any knowledge of the phone. A police search of the home also did not turn up anything.